Butch Van Artsdalen

In this segment, we pass on some of the "Legend and Lore" of Butch Van
Artsdalen -- "Black Butch." We rely heavily on a 1996 Surfer's
Journal article entitled "Recollections of Butch," which featured various
of his friends retelling some of their favorite Butch stories. Over time,
this chapter will include other Butch stories -- there are many and all
are classic.

A special thanks
to Butch's sister Annette who furnished some corrections and her own recollections
of Butch's funeral.

"A gem of a surfer
and a man who breathed life into many a person."
-- Fred Van Dyke

"[Butch went on
to] single-handedly rescue more guys in trouble on the North Shore than
probably anyone else ever will. He was one of the last of a breed
that started when surfboards were made of solid wood and faded out when
they became light little slivers of foam and fiberglass."
-- Gerry Lopez

"I learned too
late that ‘enabling’ a friend with a terrible chemical dependency like
alcoholism is not what true friendship should really be. In Butch’s
case, we should have tried to help him stop drinking. God rest his
soul."
-- Fred Hemmings

"Butch Van
Artsdalen," wrote Steve
Pezman when he was editor at Surfer
magazine in the 1980s, "was from Windansea, which in itself said almost
everything. Along with Hynson and Frye, Butch was a gremmie in the
heaviest beach crew ever, the one that went on to become 'The
Mead Hall Gang', the first ever to do the North Shore and ride the
heavies, back when they were known to be impossible."

Butch had
earlier been a three-sport letterman and a football and baseball star at
La Jolla High. "It was said he was a shoo-in as a major league catcher,"
continued Pezman. "He was a tremendously strong and instinctive natural
athlete, but his heart was more in WindanSea, the Shores, Maynard's all-you-can-eat
spaghetti and beer nights, and cruzin' up to Swami's and down to Baja with
the crew.

"Butch was
a radical drinker (honorary mayor of the Long Bar in T.J.), fighter, surfer
and very well known for his pranks up and down the coast. As Butch
grew older, tales of his antics spread..."

"He was
invincible. At one party in La Jolla,"
Steve wrote, "he squirted shaving cream all over some guy's date who thought
she was hot stuff. Desperate to maintain his honor, the girl's date
picked up an iron skillet off the stove, and with Butch's back turned,
full force cold-cocked him over the head with it. Butch, who was
chugging a cold one at the time, was seen to wince, buckle his knees slightly,
but amazingly didn't go down, and then slowly turned around to face the
guy, who by then had shrunk into a whimpering fool down on the floor pleading
for forgiveness."

"The legend
and lore surrounding Butch is deep and rich," Steve continued in an introduction
to a collection of Butch stories he ran as editor of The Surfer's Journal
in 1996, "from his WindanSea roots, to his early period on the North Shore
as the first King of Pipe, to his self-destructive final years. The
rare haole completely accepted by the Hawaiians as one of their own, Butch
could drink, fight, laugh and love with the best of them. He could
be gruff and frightening, yet tender and kind. He was a versatile
surfer, adept in both delicate smaller waves and the heaviest of the huge."

"Butch
Blocks Home Plate"

"Butch and
I played baseball together for La Jolla High School," Jim Helming told
Hoyt Smith. "I was a pitcher and he was a catcher. Butch used
to guard home plate like a bull. He would attack the base runners
if they tried to come in to score. It didn't even matter if he had
the ball. He would completely block the whole plate anyway, set in
that same crouch that must have got him through those tubes at the Pipeline.
Players would have to go directly through him. He got knocked on
his duff quite frequently and I think he actually enjoyed it. He'd
get up covered with dirt, his elbows might be scraped and bleeding and
he'd have this huge grin on his face. That was the way Butch was."

"I remember,"
continued Helming, "playing San Diego High School, which had a real good
team. We ended up beating them on this one play. The batter
hit a ground ball and this 200-pound guy tried to come in from third base
to score. The shortstop fielded the ball and threw it to Butch.
The ball bounced before it got there, but Butch blocked the plate so well
that he kept the player from reaching home. He was way up the baseline.
It was a heck of a collision, knocking Butch back three or four feet.
They both went down. Then Butch reached over, grabbed the ball and
tagged the runner out. It made the other team so mad there was almost
a brawl, whcih was never unusual with Butch around."

"The
R.F."

A later
tale was told by Steve Pezman, who knew Butch before he moved to the Islands:

"Bob Beadle
and I had loaded my '50 Ford woodie with watermelons from the field on
Coast Hwy.," began Steve, "just north of Dana Point above Silver Strand,
and motored south into Baja. We surfed that afternoon, trading melons
for tacos and tequila. The next morning being Sunday, we headed north
to Plaza Monumental, the bullring by the sea, outside of Tijuana,
where el numero uno matador de México, Luis Procuna, was fighting
that afternoon. Beadle and I bought tickets in the sun, then slipped
down into the shade next to a crew of surfers that included Butch Van Artsdalen
from La Jolla and some acquaintances from Seal Beach. Our downfall
was the two watermelons we brought in with us soaked in tequila.
As the day progressed, we ate from the melons and got smashed. The
fight wound on. Procuna did poorly and the Mexicans around us began
bombing the ring with fruit, bottles and cushions. Adding our watermelons
to the barrage seemed like a good idea. It wasn't. They smashed
poor Luis on the feet and covered him with melon bits, seeds and booze.
The crowd's mirth turned to rage and we were arrested and led from the
ring and handcuffed to a chain link fence surrounding the Plaza.
After being subjected to untold humilities by a group of rowdy drunks full
of beer who had suddenly become avid devotees of the matador (you can only
guess what they did), we were taken to the infamous Tijuana jail.
While spending the evening in an anteroom below the main cell blocks prior
to being booked, we were told we had visitors. There was Butch with
a lady friend -- a savior had arrived."

"'Hey man,
what's your bail?' he asked. We didn't know. 'How much money
do you have?' he asked. We had about eight bucks between us.
'Give me your money and I'll go back to WindanSea and raise a bunch more
off the beach and come back and bail you out.' We were so stoked.
We kept a dollar for emergency funds, (we ended up using it to buy drinking
water so we didn't have to drink from the bucket they gave us to sluice
the crapper) and gave Butch the rest of our cash and he left.

"Our dads
mercifully arrived to bail us out two days later; we never did hear from
Butch again. About a month after that I received a note from his
lady friend. It seems that Butch had the best of intentions but stopped
at the Long Bar for just one beer. After that his good intentions
were history. Try as she might, she couldn't get him to leave until
the money had all been drunk up and his memory of the earlier events of
the day were erased. She sweetly had enclosed seven dollar bills
along with her abject apology."

"Upon returning
home," Steve concluded, "Beadle and I were heroes around our local beach
for a while. It turns out the La Jolla Breeze had run an article
with the headline, 'Hoodlum Surfers Throw Watermelon at Procuna.'
And while we were still kinda pissed, we eventually came to accept how
and why Butch had RF'd us."

Paddling
for WindanSea

"It was
the Winter of '62-'63," wrote Steve Pezman, beginning to tell of a tale
Phil
Edwards had told he and some friends, "and Phil Edwards was sitting
at a table full of notable surfers of the period telling tales fo the Seaview
Inn in Haleiwa. Phil was describing the fierce, almost maniacal force
that he had once witnessed in Butch Van Artsdalen during a paddle relay
race in which Butch was competing for his beloved WindanSea against teams
from other beaches..."

"I was in shape at the time and feeling pretty strong," Steve recalled
Phil Edwards saying. "Each leg was about a mile and his teammates
had roused Butch out of a semi-comatose state to paddle the anchor lap.
Butch had started his leg well behind me and I was comfortably in the lead
rounding the last mark. Gradually, as I dug towards the finish, I
could sense someone closing behind me, muttering something as they paddled.
I looked and there was Butch, digging deep and... slowly... but... surely...
paddling... right... by me chanting, 'Come on WindanSea!' with each stroke,
over and over, like he was in a hypnotic trance. It was as if he
willed himself by me, and at that moment, anyway, I was powerless to stop
it."

"Butch was
a great and fiercely competitive racing paddler," Steve Pezman noted, "...
But his will to win could quickly be distracted to other games. At
a WindanSea two-mile paddle race, he was first around the buoy boat by
almost 200 yards, when when the race 'official' in the boat offered him
a pull from a jug of Red Mountain, Butch climbed in for 'a couple'.
One by one, the paddlers finally caught up to him, rounded the boat and
headed in toward the beach. Butch figured he'd wait for the last
straggler to go by then pass them all again easily, but by then he had
lost interest in the race completely and was more into laying back on the
boat. He finally came in around 5 in the afternoon. At one
of the early California surf contests, Butch's comment on the judging consisted
of throwing a stinking dead fish up into the judge's stand."

"The
Day Butch Became King"

"When Butch
went to the Islands," continued Steve Pezman, "he ws immediately accepted
by the locals as one of their own, for while most haoles were too afraid
to go drinking with da boys, Butch would match them 2 for 1, and was known
never to back off from a friendly little head-cracking fight."

Steve told
another story about Butch Van Artsdalen -- the day Butch became the first
"King of the Pipeline," a.k.a. "Mr. Pipeline."

"It was
the morning of a late November day during the Winter of '62-'63 on the
North Shore," Steve recalled, "that Roy Crump and I were drawn to the beach
at Pipeline on a really perfect ten-foot day. We had checked Sunset
and it was going to be fine that afternoon, but we had time to go see the
show.

"The brightest
stars of the surfing world were gathered on the beach at Pipeline, and
each was taking their turn out in the lineup -- each feeling required to
establish their credentials in the newly crowned 'ultimate challenge' that
was Pipe. You must remember, at that time, the place had only just
been [regularly] surfed since the prior winter by a mere handful
of the stoutest wave-men (well, a wave-woman had done it too. Candy
Calhoun had bodysurfed it at six to eight feet, nicely blowing our minds
a bit in the process. In fact, Butch was rumored to have dated Candy
when she lived in Laguna -- that mythical coupling being a waterperson's
version of Zeus and Aphrodite having a brief but cataclysmic fling)."

"Back to
the story," Pezman redirected, "Ricky Grigg was just coming in from performing
quite decently on a six -- or eight -- footer as Crump and I positioned
ourselves off to the side of the rooting gallery down on the sand.
Next up, Phil [Edwards] had to paddle out (the pressure was on each guy
and it wasn't that enjoyable for them -- this was defense of reputation
rather than a fun thing going on here). Edwards chose an inside four-footer,
took off deep, managed a dangerously high, right-go-left top turn, dropped
in a foot or so more, totally upright and relaxed, cross-stepped into forward
trim and flew outta there (making a stylishly clean solution out of the
ticklish problem) then straightened out and came right in, reputation gracefully
intact, thank you. Crump and I nodded sagely -- Phil was cool.
He hadn't gotten sucked into a high-risk wave by the crowd pressure.
He had done it on his terms and then called it off."

"By then,"
Steve continued, "the beach was packed with the kings of surf. John
Peck, Diffenderfer, Dick Brewer, to name just a few, and Butch, who had
been studying the waves, decided to paddle out. Mike Doyle, who had
paddled out earlier, caught a macker, ten plus, and it just collapsed on
him and blew him to smithereens. His board was swept up hard on the
granular sand and he washed in after it about ten minutes later.
Crump and I were taking in the entire spectacle with rapt attention.
Doyle came out of the water, droplets glistening on his deeply tanned,
staturesque frame. As he walked up the beach toward his board, he
held his hands away from his body and shook the moisture and sand particles
from his finger tips, preening and pumped a bit from the considerable exertion
of the swim."

"Suddenly,"
continued Steve Pezman, "Diffenderfer shouted, 'Check out Van Artsdalen,'
and pointed out to sea. Butch was dropping in on a huge one.
He was way too late and way too deep to make it. But with his animal
instincts somehow matching up with the crusher wave, Butch held it in as
he careened sideways down the face. Doyle, having twisted his upper
torso so he could view what all the commotion was about, was sudden;y fast
frozen in amazement at what he was watching. The curtain threw out
and over Butch, then it erupted into a thundering explosion all around
him, but we could still see the flash of his red trunks streaking through
the falls. It was totally impossible that he could pull it off.
Then Diff stood up and screamed, 'Come out of it, Butch! Come out
of it!' That show of emotion absolutely stunned us. Then Butch
did come flying out. We gasped in disbelief. Doyle fell to
the sand face down, rolling over and over while muttering, 'Nobody does
that! Nobody does that!'"

"In that
instant," declared Pez, "Butch Van Artsdalen had become the first 'King
of the Pipeline.' Crump and I looked at Doyle rolling in the sand,
then out at the waves, then at the crowd on the beach screaming their guts
out, then at each other and we just shook our heads.

"Later that
winter, from Max Lim's cottages off to the right of the point, Bob Beadle
and I personally witnessed Tommy Lee at Waimea Bay paddle out alone with
no one that he knew of on the beach, ride five twenty-five foot waves from
behind the boil, then come in, slide his gun into the back of his '57 Ford
wagon and drive off without saying a word to anyone about it. And
I rode fair-sized Waimea and some big days at Sunset myself, but that day
at Pipe, when Butch came out, was my personal most memorable moment in
surfing."

"Butch's
Wild Rickshaw Ride"

George Lanning
told this Butch story to Hoyt Smith:

"One night
Butch said to me, 'Let's go to Waikiki and have some fun.' So his
girl friend and I drove in from the North Shore. Butch was a member
of the Duke Kahanamoku Surf Team at the time, so we went to Duke's nightclub
and there was a big line of people waiting to get in. Right in front
of the club was a rickshaw, which was chained to the post. They didn't
give rickshaw rides in those days. We'd been drinking and were feeling
pretty loose, so Butch grabbed the rickshaw, pulled the tow bar away from
the side handle and slipped the chain off.

"The girl
and I jumped in the rickshaw and Butch ran us through the International
Marketplace, jumping up and down, getting real high off the ground, hollering
'Ching how, Ching how!' When we returned, this tourist couple, newlyweds,
came up to us and the man asked if they could have a ride. He thought
we were legitimate businessmen. I said, 'Oh, of course.' Butch
didn't talk. He just kept going 'Ching how, Ching how!' We'd
been drinking excessively. So Butch took them for a ride around the
Marketplace. When they got back, they were very excited. The
husband said it was the most fun he'd had on the entire honeymoon and slipped
Butch a $20 bill."

"Right after
the newlyweds left," continued George Lanning, "two big Hawaiian policemen
grabbed each of us by the neck and marched us up past this incredibly long
line to the front door. It was about 9 p.m. and everyone was waiting
to see the Don Ho show. The policemen knew who Butch was. They
told us how bad we were and how we shouldn't have been doing that.
Then they told the people at the door to seat us immediately, before we
got into any more trouble. The door people took us up to a front
row table. We had the best seats in the house. We ordered a
round of mai-tais and Butch disappeared. His girl friend and I were
sitting next to each other, wondering where he was. We couldn't find
him anywhere. Suddenly the show started. We looked up and there's
Butch on stage, wearing these giant sunglasses, dancing the hula and singing
with Don Ho."

"The
Lifeguard"

"I met Butch
for the first time as he screamed out from behind Peter [Cole] and me at
Sunset," recalled big wave surfer Fred Van Dyke, "he yelled, 'Move, shoulder
holsters, move,' did a switch stance as he climbed up the face and shot
behind both of us. Paddling back out to the lineup he jibed us about
being 'Chicken $@#!,' we should take off where the waves were a challenge.
He did the same thing at Pipeline, always farthest back and the hairiest
takeoff."

"However,
the part of Butch's life that got less recognition," Van Dyke continued,
"was his job as lifeguard at the Pipeline. He was one of the first
guards on the North Shore along with Eddie Aikau. Butch loved his
job and put in time beyond his daily schedule.

"While surfing
Pipeline on late evenings after work, he continued to make incredible rescues.
His concern was such that he would attempt to prevent a disaster before
it occurred. With a patience that belied his sometimes rough demeanor,
he would dispense friendly advice, handed out to both surfer and tourist
alike that was almost always received with gratitude. He never made
anyone feel insecure or in the wrong for getting into a tight spot in the
surf, aside from his friendly jibes at his friends who all rode the shoulder
in his opinion. After all, who would argue with Mr. Pipeline?"

"One day
I was sitting on my surf check near Butch's tower. I had just taken
a break from cutting my lawn which ran right down to the white sandy beach.

"Looking
toward Pipeline, I saw Butch jump from his tower, run with his lifeguard
board underarm, launch into the shore break, and sprint into the middle
of the rip. I put the binoculars to my eyes and saw a small group
of surfers supporting a motionless person.

"Butch arrived,
deftly pulled the body up on his board and tandemed to the beach, spending
only a few seconds to accomplish that much. Jeff Johnson and I ran
down the beach and helped Butch carry the limp form up the sand.
No life appeared. No pulse, no breathing. He was a black kid
from Schofield Barracks, about 18, and for all practical purposes dead.
A surfer had seen him face down on the bottom; how long he'd been down
there no one knew.

"I felt
sick looking down upon this young man, but Butch took command, ordering
us to massage his arms and legs. The kid's face was blue, his eyes
rolled up into his head. Butch, focused on resuscitation, leaned
forward, checked for foreign objects in the throat, bent and breathed into
the kid's mouth. His motion became a rhythm, push breath into the
kid, lean backward and apply heart massage.

Minutes
passed, Butch yelling, 'Damn it come back, come back.' in between breaths.
Butch's face flushed. He appeared that at any time a blood vessel
would burst, but he didn't let up. Ten, fifteen minutes passed.
He screamed at us to massage harder, help him with the heart massage.
Butch appeared to be the master surgeon, the man so involved that when,
suddenly, the kid threw up into Butch's mouth, he only turned sideways
for a moment, spit and went back to mouth-to-mouth.

"The ambulance
arrived with the resuscitator and oxygen. Butch hooked the kid to
the machine and sat back. Unbelievable, but suddenly I watched the
young lad take a breath, his stomach convulse, and then he sat up.
Butch supported him with all his strength and held him in a sitting position.
Color returned to his face, and the kid stood, walked with the assistance
of Butch to the ambulance. He would be all right.

"Things
quieted down, returning to the tourist's 'oohs' and 'ahhs' while surfers
took gas at the Banzai Pipeline. Butch asked me to watch his guard
stand while he took a short break, walked back into the shade, opened a
cooler, cracked a Primo and lit a cigarette.

"Butch finished
that day of lifeguarding the same as all of the rest," Fred Van Dyke ended.
"He worked until he passed away... A gem of a surfer and a man who
breathed life into many a person."

"Black
Butch"

"Riding
a surfboard that weighed 40-50 pounds with a shape more like a rounded-off
door in comparison to the sleek designs of today took an altogether different
cut of surfer," Pipeline legend Gerry Lopez began his recollection of Butch.
"The designs, or lack of, being what they were meant wipeouts were not
infrequent and being a surfer required a certain amount of swimming skills
as well. The image of the modern, light-weight, serious-minded, specialized
surfer in the mold of Derek Ho or Tom Carroll is the exact opposite of
the big, strong, carefree waterman of the '50s and '60s."

"In that
time," continued Gerry Lopez, who, after Butch, was the second person to
hold the "Mr. Pipeline" moniker, "'when men were men,' Butch Van Artsdalen
was one of the best. A top surfer through the '60s, one of the North
Shore pioneers, the original 'Mr. Pipeline,' an innovative switch footer,
and an unrepentant partier. When the '70s and the shortboard came
along, he moved easily into position as one of the early lifeguards on
the North Shore.

"Anyone
who has surfed at Sunset Beach knows there is no such thing as a simple
or easy wipeout. And in those days, before the use of surfboard leashes,
it didn't take long to find out there was nothing simple about the swim
in either. I remember one afternoon session back in the early '70s,
the swell running about 10-12' from the northwest and the peaks shifty
and windy like usual. Suddenly, a huge set loomed on the horizon
and everybody scrambled to get out of the way. I knew I was too deep
and too far inside, but kept paddling anyway, up the face of the first
wave with just enough momentum to break through the pitching lip.
In that weightless airborne moment in the blinding spray, one glimpse was
all I needed to see that the next wave was much bigger and was already
breaking. Landing on the backslope, I took a couple of half-hearted
paddles, hyperventilating like crazy, silently cursing my inattention in
the lineup and rolled off the side as the thundering mountain of white
water bore down on me. One of the good things about not wearing a
cord is being able to dive deep and get under a breaking wave with little
danger of being sucked up into the boiling cauldron. There are, of
course, those occasional waves at Sunset that will just pluck you off the
bottom and rag doll you so bad you don't know which way is up, but I was
lucky on this set. The next step, having escaped the ravages of the
first set, was to get out of the impact zone before the next set came in.
The thought of a serious pounding is a powerful enough incentive to turn
a weak swimmer into a Mark Spitz."

"In those
days," continued Lopez, "as soon as you cleared the detonation area, you
had to immediately start looking for your board. There was always
a chance it would drift out into the channel and start going back out to
sea in the rip. This was good if you spotted it because it would
shorten the swim, but if you missed it, it wasn't like it is now where
there's a lot of people watching on the beach or paddling out who could
tell you where your board was -- back then it was sayonara surfboard.
There were lots of guys who would paddle out on a brand new board, get
caught inside, lose their board and never see it again without catching
a single wave and ever knowing how it worked."

"Anyway,"
Lopez regrouped, "getting back to our story, I looked in, saw a red board
on the beach and bodysurfed, swam and clawed my way in through the little
channel between Val's and the Point, saving myself from that skin-removing
scuttle over the reef in front of Val Valentine's old house. Running
up the beach, I got that sudden sinking feeling as I could see the red
board was not my red board. Not recognizing whose board it was, nobody
had decals on their surfboards back then anyway, I stuck it upright in
the sand so its owner could spot it from the water and dashed off down
the beach towards the main channel in a mild panic. My board was
nowhere on the beach, and this was the first time I had ever missed seeing
it in the channel on the swim in. I was determined to never, ever,
lose a surfboard in the rip at Sunset Beach, especially not my favorite
red gun as I ran towards a couple of guys further down the beach.
One of them was Butch and I asked if either had seen a red board in the
rip. The other guy pointed out towards Kammieland and Butch and I
both spotted it at the same time, about halfway out the channel.

"Butch just
said, 'I'll go get it,' and jumped into the water. I yelled after
him, 'Hey, what color is your board.' Remembering that big, heavy,
old red board up the beach, I knew what he was going to say before he shouted
back, 'RED,' and was gone, plunging out to sea in that mile-eating lifeguard
stroke. 'Wait a minute,' I said, then somewhat feebly, 'Your board's
on the beach, that's mine out there...' Not knowing what else to
do, I sat down and watched him swim after my board which was really moving
out with the current now, getting smaller by the moment. It was starting
to get late, when the glare goes away and the light gets soft before the
sun starts to set. I could see that he was making good time, only
about a hundred yards or so from the board but way out there, almost even
with the outside lineup when a big set comes rolling in at Kammie's, with
the board right in its path. It drifts up the face of the first one,
hangs in the lip for a moment then pops over the back. Butch is swimming
like mad now, angling in from the channel as the board does a repeat on
the second wave, doing a couple of barrel rolls as it flies over the back
and lands in the trough. Butch manages to swim up and get a hand
on it as the third wave breaks and whisks it away from him. I watch
as the board tumbles all the way in on the last wave. As I walk down
the beach to retrieve my board, I'm trying to think up what I'll tell Butch,
knowing he's going to be really pissed. Finally he comes ashore down
near the bridge and I run over as he comes up the beach.

"'Hey Butch,
jeez. I'm sorry, that wasn't even your board and you really had a
long swim.' I can remember him in that golden moment as the sun was
setting, shaking the water out of his short-cut black hair (when everyone
else had their's long), big and broad shouldered, striding through the
sand in a pair of faded plaid Bermuda shorts with the pockets turned out.

"'No sweat
kid, that's all I go out there for anyway. You guys can have the
surfing. I just do rescue work and your board looked like it needed
some help.' I looked at him sideways and he started laughing.
'Yeah, I saw you stick my board in the sand up there but I wanted to swim
some more, so what the hell... anyway, if you don't want your board going
out the rip, just bodysurf the biggest wave right in, it's more fun.'

"I don't
know if he rescued any more boards, but he did go on to single-handedly
rescue more guys in trouble on the North Shore than probably anyone else
ever will. He was one of the last of a breed that started when surfboards
were made of solid wood and faded out when they became light little slivers
of foam and fiberglass. You won't find many like him anymore, but
there's a lot of guys like me who still remember the tales, but that's
another story."

"Aloha,
Butch"

"I was born
and grew up sufing in the San Diego area in the early 1960s," began Kip
A. Kennedy in a memorial story he told for The Surfer's Journal.
The top surfers in the San Diego area at that time were Skip Frye, Mike
Hynson and Butch Van Artsdalen.

"As young
surf nazis, we heard a lot of the 'Butch stories.' Basically, Butch
did three things equally well: surf, drink and brawl. Butch
was quite the brawler. We had all heard the stories of Butch at parties
and bars, such as Butch drinking and partying with some of the San Diego
Chargers in the early history of that franchise. Allegedly Butch
punched out a couple of their biggest linemen. Butch was notorious
for drinking and carousing at popular Mexican bars south of the border,
such as the Black Cat, the Blue Fox, the Chi Chi Club, the Long Bar and
Hussongs. There were stories of Butch passed out in the back of his
car at the old 'Maynards,' a famous surfer eatery by Crystal Pier, popular
for its 25 cent spaghetti night. Then later on, the drinking and
brawling stories over in the islands at such landmark spots as the Haleiwa
Sands, the Outrigger Canoe Club, Duke's
and other famous bars in Waikiki and Hotel Street, with such famous legends
as the quarterback of the Washington Redskins, Sonny Jergenson, who was
a good friend and drinking buddy of Butch's."

"Butch was
also a very gifted athlete," continued Kip Kennedy. "We all know
he became Mr. Pipeline, but before that, Butch was the King of 'Big Rock',
La Jolla's answer to the Pipeline, where he ripped. Butch was an
all-star baseball player at La Jolla High School, and was so good, the
San Diego Padres signed him to a major league contract. But the call
of the Islands was too strong -- Butch took his baseball signing bonus
money and left San Diego and baseball to fulfill destiny and become Mr.
Pipeline."

"In 1970,"
Kennedy retold, "I moved to Hawaii to work at Joey Cabell's Chart House
in Honolulu and to surf the big waves of the North Shore. In 1973,
I became a Honolulu City and County Lifeguard, and guarded at Sandy Beach
for many years. In the lifeguard service at that time were many of
the top watermen, including Eddie Aikau, Buffalo Keaulana, Jimmy Blears,
Mark Sedlak, Mark Cunningham, Daryl Picadura, Bruce Lee, Teneé Froiseth,
and, of course, Butch Van Artsdalen, who lifeguarded on the North Shore
at Pipeline.

"On my days
off from guarding at Sandy Beach in the wintertime, I would go up and surf
the North Shore. I really loved bodysurfing at Pipeline where I would
visit with Butch. We would sit on the bench under the plumeria trees
next to his lifeguard stand and visit and talk story, usually about San
Diego, surfing, sports, etc. These two stories that Butch told me
have always stood out in my mind:"

"In the
old days," Kip Kennedy retold a story Butch Van Artsdalen told him, "there
used to be a plate lunch restaurant just before the Haleiwa Bridge called
the Fly Trap. One day, Butch and his friends stopped there on their
way to go surfing. After they had eaten and were leaving the restaurant,
they noticed a big army troop carrier truck from Schofield Barracks pull
up and the driver enter the restaurant. Butch passed by the truck
and happened to look inside and noticed that the keys were in it.
He then winked at his friends, grabbed his surfboard, thew it in the back
of the army truck, jumped in, started it up, and roared down the Kam Highway
with his friends in hot pursuit. After a couple of miles down the
road, he made an immediate turn off the highway and crashed the truck through
the jungle and kiawa bushes, all the way to the beach where he jumped out,
grabbed his board and paddled out leaving the Army guys to figure out where
their truck was and how to get it out of there."

"One day,"
Kip A. Kennedy told another story of Butch, "Butch and I were surfing at
Ehukai Beach in front of his lifeguard tower and Butch was riding an old
Hobie longboard. I commented to him afterwards what great rides he
had gotten since he hardly surfed anymore. When we got out of the
water, he showed me on his board where all the shapers, glassers, sanders,
etc., had signed his blank with some pretty rude and funny stuff, such
as 'Butch is a fag and can't surf,' etc., etc., and then he told me the
rest of the story.

"The board
was shaped and glassed at the Hobie factory in Dana Point. At that
time there was vacant land next to the original Hobie shop which was full
of king snakes and garter snakes. The guys who packed Butch's Hobie
to send to Hawaii also threw in a couple of king and garter snakes to accompany
Butch's board to the Islands. When Butch's rudely inscribed board
arrived, Butch gleefully ripped open the end of this board box, stuck his
hand in to pull his board out, and was immediately struck by a half-starved
king snake who bit the shit out of him and coiled himself around his hand,
while Butch did the dance of the serpent. Boy, I wish I had that
board today."

Toward the end
of his life,” Kip Kennedy explained, “Butch lived with a good friend of
mine, Milton Beamer III, the manager of the old Surf Line Surf Shop in
Honolulu. I still remember the three of us sitting on Beamer’s front
porch on the North Shore, drinking and talking story.”

Butch died on
the morning of July 18, 1979, his life cut short by alcoholism.

His sister Annette
wrote me about Butch’s passing twenty-three years later:

“As I write this
e mail there is still much pain and emptiness in my heart for my brother,
Butch.

“My mother, sister
and I flew to Hawaii as soon as the doctors at Wahiawa General Hospital
called us and told us Butch was in grave condition and would need a caregiver
that could stay with him 24/7. Butch had his own apartment at the
time of his death… My Mom and I stayed in it part of the time during the
month we were in Hawaii to settle Butch’s affairs.

“Fred
Hemmings and Michael Tongg were lifesavers for my Mom and I… many people…
were there, too... Fred was very much a part of making the funeral arrangements
and giving a eulogy for Butch. However, Rev. Harvey Angel, of Haleiwa
Baptist Church, was also present and led the service. There was also
a couple that sang and played a guitar.

“As for the paddle
out, I was blessed with the privilege of scattering my brothers ashes.
He had been my BIG BROTHER and protector and taken such great care of me.
The least I could do was muster up enough strength to scatter his ashes
into the place his heart and soul loved, the ocean! As I scattered
my brother’s ashes Fred was right there beside my sister and I. My
Mom stayed on the shore with Rev. Angel.”

“When Butch passed
away,” Kip Kennedy remembers, “Beamer called me and told me Butch was gone.
He and I attended Butch’s funeral together at Pipeline. It was probably
the biggest funeral ever seen on the North Shore at that time. I
still remember that Fred Hemmings gave a beautiful eulogy for Butch, and
then we all paddled out to the peak at Pipeline where Butch’s ashes were
scattered. At the same exact time, there was a corresponding service
at WindanSea... on the mainland. After the service at Pipeline, everybody
went up to the park at Ehukai to drink and tell Butch stories.”

"To this
day," Kip Kennedy wrote, "I have a beautiful picture of Butch surfing at
the Pipeline that Dr. Don James shot hanging in my study. If there
is one thing I would like to see as a lasting tribute to Butch, it is someone
like Skip Frye, Donald Takayama, Mike Eaton, Mike Diffenderfer, Phil Edwards
or another reputable longboard shaper, design and shape a classic three-stringer
Butch Van Artsdalen Big Rock/Pipeline model in his memory. I would
certainly buy the first one."

Butch’s
Lesson

“Most of
the people who knew him,” wrote Fred Hemmings in his book The Soul of
Surfing is Hawaiian, “would agree that Butch was one of the most handsome
and athletically gifted surfers in the sport. He looked like a dark-haired
Robert Redford. Butch was drafted by a pro baseball farm team after
high school. He could consistently punt a football 60 yards.
He played basketball like a pro. This guy had it all. He also
had a fatal flaw.”

“Butch stories
abound,” continued Fred. “He was the first Mr. Pipeline. A
goofy foot, Butch perfected the art of pulling up tight into a Pipeline
barrel. He was fearless. He rode big Waimea. Butch could
switch stances naturally. He did it all. He also drank… too
much.”

“Butch and
I traveled with the Duke Team,” Fred went on, “and ended up partying and
being wild men together. I was a weekend warrior drinker, too.
After bouts with drinking, Butch had one of the strangest habits ever.
He would sleep in precarious places. We once dropped a young lady
off after a date. I was driving my mother’s old ’56 Chevy wagon.
We started to drive back home, and I decided it would be better to pull
over and sleep it off. I awoke later to find Butch sleeping under
the car. Once, in San Francisco, we rose in the morning after being
out on the town to find Butch sleeping in a planter box one story up, outside
a bay window. Everyone who surfed in the sixties has a Butch story.”

“This is
sad,” Fred wrote. “Butch was a terminal alcoholic. In the early
seventies, when I focused my energies on the business of pro surfing, I
dropped out of being a North Shore regular. Though great friends
during our Duke Team days, Butch and
I drifted apart. How tragic it was to periodically run into Butch
and see that the ravages of alcoholism were slowly draining away his life.
Butch drank himself to death at 38 years old [July 18, 1979]. Alcoholism,
like drug addiction, ultimately destroys lives. We gathered on the
beach at Ehukai for his funeral. After eulogies by friends, we took
his ashes out to the Pipeline lineup.

“I learned
too late that ‘enabling’ a friend with a terrible chemical dependency like
alcoholism is not what true friendship should really be. In Butch’s
case, we should have tried to help him stop drinking. God rest his
soul.”